Download Stars presentation by lauren

Before my research I thought
stars did twinkle, but they
actually don’t! Stars shine a
steady light. The reason they
appear to be twinkling, is the
Earth’s atmosphere and wind
slightly bends the starlight. So
to us here on Earth, the
starlight moves quickly, but it
is just our planet’s
atmosphere. If we were on
the moon or a planet with no
atmosphere, the stars would
not look like they were
twinkling.
Before my research, I thought stars were
just hot, giant rocks, with solid ground, so
I thought we could stand on one. But
humans can only stand on solid ground,
and stars are made of hot gases, like
hydrogen and helium, so we wouldn’t be
able to stand on a star. Another reason
why we can’t stand on a star is they are
too hot. The middle of a star can reach 1
million degrees Celsius! All the stars are
too hot to visit.
Proxima
Centauri
If we wanted to land on a star, we would
have to travel there. The nearest star
(apart from the sun) is called Proxima
Centauri, and it is 4.3 light years away! It
would take us over 1,000 years to get
there! It seems impossible, but scientists
say we might be able to visit the stars in
the future………
Stars are made up of different gases, mostly
hydrogen and helium. They are also made
of dust grains. When there is too much
hydrogen and helium inside a star, the
hydrogen and helium turns into heavier
types of gas. When a star dies, the excess
gas is used in stars that are just forming.
Before I researched
this, I thought all stars
were yellow, but I was
wrong. Stars vary in
size and colour. The
hotter stars in the solar
system are a blue-ish
colour. The colder stars
are red. Our sun is an
average temperature
star, so it is an
orange/yellow colour.
The telescope in space,
Hubble, has taken
photos of stars, and has
sent back some pictures
back of clusters of lots
of different coloured
stars.
Yes!!!The sun is only
average size, there are
stars much bigger and
much smaller! The sun is
big enough to swallow all
the planets in the solar
system, but some stars are
over 150 times BIGGER
than that!! Scientists have
discovered that on the
other side of the galaxy,
there are much bigger
stars. That is where the
biggest star in the galaxy
is.So our sun is actually not
that big compared to other
stars.
The biggest star
known to us is
called LBV180620.(the LBV
stands for
Luminous Blue
Variable star). It
is a blue star, so
it is very hot.
This star is over
5 MILLION times
brighter than our
sun! It is over
45,000 light
years away from
Earth, and is at
least 150 times
bigger than the
sun!
This is what
LBV180620 looks like
I used to think that shooting stars
were actually stars falling, but
they’re not.They are meteorites.
When the meteorites enter the
Earth’s atmosphere, they start to
burn up, which is why shooting stars
have a tail. When and if shooting
stars land on the surface of earth,
they are very small.
Without a telescope, humans can see about
7,000 stars in the night sky. There are many more
in space though! There are too many stars in the
sky to count, but a rough estimate is about
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!!!!!!!We cannot
see stars in other galaxies without using powerful
telescopes.
Some people think we are polluting
space by exploring it, because when
space shuttles fly, they have pieces
falling of, called stages. These just
keep floating around space,
colliding with other planets and
damaging them. To solve this we
could just stop space exploration,
OR we could build a new type of
shuttle that doesn’t have to have
things falling off, so we wouldn’t be
polluting space anymore.
Books: Don't know much about the solar system
Question and Answers about the stars
Expert: Some of my information was provided by Laura Whitlock who works
at NASA
DVD: All about the stars
Incursion: I got some information from the Back to the Moon incursion.
Websites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star
http://library.thinkquest.org
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/astrophysics